


a pirate off the high sea

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: DW Exchange 2020, Multi, They/Them Pronouns For the Corsair, alcohol mention, be gay do crime, gratuitous use of semicolons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25308010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: the doctor runs into two old friends at a fundraiser, and gets into unnecessary trouble.
Relationships: The Corsair/The Doctor (Doctor Who), The Corsair/The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The Corsair/Thirteenth Doctor, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21
Collections: DW Exchange 2020





	a pirate off the high sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechup/gifts).



The Doctor’s hair pulled at her scalp awkwardly, her dress was itchy and uncomfortable, and whatever awful fabric contraption that was keeping the bits of fat attached to her chest from bouncing around was poking her in the side and between two ribs.

She was, to summarize, not having a very good time.

Parties were for having a good time, she had thought, but lately, more often than not, they were for lingering in the corner and wincing at the pressing noise coming from every angle. She missed —

— No, she didn’t miss him. There was a part of the Doctor’s mind that refused to let her even admit to missing him, as if the problem was her awful traitorous feelings instead of actually  _ him _ . She let her eyes flick over the crowd anyway, as if she could find the Master hidden somewhere in the crowd…

The Doctor squinted at a whoosh of purple fabric disappearing against the far wall. “It can’t be,” she said to herself, because there was nobody else to talk to and just thinking it didn’t seem dramatic enough. 

She set off to follow that specific purple, not daring to hope it was exactly who she thought it was. And if it was, the Doctor was just going to stop whatever murder or chaos was in the cards for today. She was certainly  _ not  _ hoping for a nice exchange of pleasantries (unrealistic, anyway), or insults (more plausible), or a clandestine kiss in the hallways of this sprawling mansion. 

The Doctor’s breath caught in her throat as she saw an all-too familiar Victorian hairstyle (or was it Edwardian? Never mind that now) and heard that Scottish burr: “Oh, my  _ darling _ …” 

(She didn’t really  _ mean _ that sudden bolt of jealousy that flashed through her chest. Not at all. The Doctor had no reason to be jealous whatsoever). 

(But  _ darling _ ? Really? And to a near-stranger, most probably!)

The Doctor pushed past a very offended-looking woman holding a delicate champagne glass, but just as Missy’s face came completely into sight, something grabbed her sleeve roughly and she was pulled away.

“Wh—”

The Doctor’s captor put a gloved finger over her lips, leaving the Doctor sufficiently silent but more than a little upset. (The  _ audacity! _ ) They were built slim and sturdy, as if specifically made for dashing escapes, and chestnut hair spilled down their shoulders in undeniably gorgeous curls. They were wearing a well-fit suit and a bowtie patterned with cartoonish fish, and a scar cut their left eyebrow, possibly from one of said daring escapes.

“Doctor,” they hissed, and the Doctor was aware of the uncomfortable feeling that she really should know the newcomer. She knew things about them, that was for sure, but who  _ were _ they? 

“Mas…” she said, uncertain.

“Oh, shut up. It’s always about him with you, isn’t it?” 

The Doctor felt slightly dejected at the (albeit correct) commentary, and she chewed her bottom lip. “ _ Nooooo _ . It’s always about  _ me _ with  _ him _ .”

Her captor raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow, the one without the scar. “Sure. Look, I need your help with something.” They glanced around. “Or rather, I need you not to fuck up what I’m trying to do.”

“Yeah. Wait. Who are you?”

They pursed their lips and seemed extraordinarily disappointed in the Doctor, and pressed their fingertips to her forehead. She blinked, that horrible niggling feeling finally dissipating, although the Corsair in her brain wasn’t all that fun.  _ Recognize me now? _

“Yeeeees. What are you doing here?”

The Corsair moved their hand away and slipped out of the Doctor’s brain with a cold rush of brain…. something. “I just need you to stay away. Go back to your box…”

“Can’t I help?”

“No.”

The Doctor furrowed her brows. “I’m fun. I can help with —”

“And  _ what _ do we have  _ here _ ?” said a mockingly shrill voice from beside the two of them. The Doctor could have melted from joy just at the sound of it. ( _ It’s always about him with you, isn’t it? _ said the Corsair inside her mind, and the Doctor wasn’t sure if it was her own subconscious talking or the actual Corsair). 

The Doctor whirled around. “Missy!” she said, attempting to sound accusatory instead of gleeful. “You, erm, interrupted us.”

Her icy blue eyes lingered on the Doctor’s for a moment, and those clandestine kisses were beginning to sound very,  _ very _ tempting. “Doctor,” she said. “Corsair.”

“When did  _ you _ get here?” said the Corsair, brushing a stray strand of hair behind their ear. They had always had such lovely hair, and this regeneration was no different. “Don’t tell me. You’re here for her attention?”

“Who?” said the Doctor, feeling left out of some grandly clever joke.

Both the Corsair and Missy just stared at her as if she’d missed something glaringly obvious. “You,” said the Corsair. “Everything this woman does is about —”

“And I think that’s quite enough catching up for today!” said Missy hurriedly. “Erm, Corsie, I do have important business to attend to, although it was… a- _ hem _ … all right to see you again. As it were.”

“As it were,” muttered the Corsair sarcastically. 

“My dear Corsair. My darling lady,” she said to the Doctor. 

The Doctor grimaced.

“My darling Doctor,” corrected Missy, more kindly than usual. She kissed the Corsair on the forehead, leaving a smear of red that they wiped off with a frown, and kissed the Doctor on the mouth, without much passion or care at all. The Doctor thought about grabbing her again for something better, but she whisked off into the crowd before that was possible.

The Corsair sighed. “I assume neither of us are very happy about her right now.”

“Hmm,” said the Doctor, who was never very happy about Missy anyway. 

“Want to steal some earrings with me?”

“Hmm,” said the Doctor again, who theoretically had a strict moral code that would not allow for stealing earrings for fun. “Yeah, all right.”

* * *

Their poor earrings-owning victim was a lady that must have been, at the very least, six feet tall, and was wearing the most horrendous combinations of colors that the Doctor could ever think of. The  _ Doctor. _ That the  _ Doctor  _ could think of. And the Doctor had worn some generally questionable combinations of colors back in her day.

“Just distract her, I’ll take her purse, and we’ll all be fine,” said the Corsair.

The Doctor looked around subconsciously; whether for authority figures or Missy, she couldn’t tell. “How do I distract her?” she asked. She was not very good at distractions. “Ask her the weather?”

“What? Seduce her, or something.” The Corsair waved a hand around. “How do you convince Missy to be so enamoured with you?” There was another, underlying question there — one that wasn’t about Missy at all — but the Doctor elected to ignore that. 

“I don’t really do anything at all. She just…”  _ She just likes me? Doesn’t seem like it, huh?  _ said the back of the Doctor’s mind, viciously. 

“Yeah. Do that.” They pushed the Doctor out of their shared relatively safe hiding place within the crush of chattering, well-dressed people and right in front of the lady.

The lady peered down at the Doctor through gold-rimmed glasses, her crimson lips in a bright frown. When had the Doctor gotten so short? “Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” said the Doctor. 

“Did you… need something?”

_ I don’t really do anything at all. _ But that wasn’t true. That had never been true. The Doctor just had to find her footing again. “This isn’t your house, is it?” said the Doctor, blinking at the lady through her eyelashes.

“Indeed it is,” said the lady, looking somewhat amused.

“It’s  _ so _ pretty,” gushed the Doctor. This was not why Missy liked her. In fact, she thought Missy would despise this side of her. “You’re so pretty,” she said, almost shyly, every word calculated to weasel past the woman’s cool front.

The woman giggled. “You’re a little charmer, aren’t you?”

Little! She wasn’t little. “Oh, am I?” It felt weak.  _ What would Missy do? _ “Where are the refreshments? The room is just ever so big.”

The lady, who introduced herself as Cassie, led her across the room, while the Doctor chattered on and on about inane things and pointless little compliments. She felt terribly deceptive.

She liked it.

Too quietly to hear, the Corsair snuck up behind Cassie and the Doctor and slipped their hand into her bag, fishing around for far too long for the Doctor’s tastes. The Doctor kept her mouth moving, kept their conversation going, but all the while she was thinking  _ FASTER?  _ as loudly as she could.

_ I’m going as fast as possible, thank you very much! _

The Doctor gritted her teeth together. 

At that very moment, Missy decided to pop up again, somewhere in the corner of the Doctor’s peripheral vision.  _ Hey, darling. _

The Doctor ignored her. “And where I’m from it’s just sunny all the time, like all the time, so was it a slap in the face the first time it rained! I love the weather here, of course, I really do, I wish I could stay here longer…”

_ Keep her talking! _ said the Corsair silently.

_ You do look beautiful, _ said Missy.

“Everybody get OUT of my HEAD!” shouted the Doctor, throwing up her hands and wrestling her arm from Cassie’s grip. 

And then a very lot of things happened in a very short amount of time.

Firstly and most important in the moment, for the Doctor, she flushed bright hot red and wanted to sink down into the floor and never emerge again. (Maybe it would be nice and cool in the dirt, at least);

The Corsair evidently found the earrings in Cassie’s bag, shoving them in their back pocket and dipping immediately out of sight;

Cassie whirled around to her and said, “Whatever does that mean!” except it was an exclamation and not a question at all; 

And: Missy burst forward and grabbed the Doctor’s hand, tugging her away to safety. 

Missy’s skin on her skin felt uncomfortably hot, although the Doctor might have just been sweating a lot. She felt vaguely embarrassed about that, although it took a lot to make her embarrassed in front of Missy by now. They had known each other for such an awfully long time, after all.

Missy didn’t stop her determined march through the room until the two of them were outside in the cool night London air. “You’re stressed,” said Missy, and kissed her again, just as soft and quick as last time.

“No.”

Missy tapped her nose.

“Yes,” she admitted, falling into Missy’s arms with all the built up fatigue and stress in the world. The fabric of her dress was a bit itchy and woolen, but the Doctor didn’t mind. She  _ needed _ Missy; she always had, loathe as she was to admit it. 

Missy was so warm. She’d always been so warm.

“Shall we go make sure our partner is okay? Don’t pretend, Doctor, you know as well as I do who they are to us.” ( _ Us _ . Such a little thing, and there was no way around it, but the Doctor still loved the way Missy said Us. Like they were inseparable. A package deal.) 

“I think they’re all right.”

Missy pat the Doctor awkwardly on the back. “Nevertheless.  _ Vamanos. _ ”

The Corsair was, in fact, perfectly fine; and they had a single sparkling silver earring as big as a fist hanging from their right ear. They were sitting in the windowsill of a very large window in a room off the main party room, staring listlessly at the dark, empty street. “Hallo,” they said, not bothering to turn around.

“Nice earring. Where’s the other one?” asked the Doctor.

The Corsair tossed a shimmering bit of metal over her shoulder. It landed with a clatter on the floor. “Doesn’t lend itself to the aesthetic much.”

“Pirate?” the Doctor guessed.

“Obviously,” said Missy. She sighed at the Doctor’s blank face. “Find a dictionary when we get home, darling.”

(The Doctor didn’t miss that very sly  _ we _ .)

“Thank you for the assistance, Doctor,” said the Corsair, sounding fairly fond. “You can take the earring, you know. You earned it.”

“Poor Cassie.”

“She deserved it,” the Corsair assured her, although they didn’t elaborate further. 

The Doctor sat down beside the Corsair and idly played with a thick strand of their hair. “I never got any refreshments, you know.” 

“We could go for dinner,” suggested Missy from behind her. “I can cover the bill, if you need.”

“I can,” said the Doctor.

“You can’t,” said Missy.

The Doctor didn’t argue any more about that. “I’m all dressed up. All of us are all dressed up.” Missy was always dressed up, of course. Dressed-down Missy would be more concerning than overly dressed-up Missy, by now. 

“We’re gorgeous, you mean?” said Missy. 

Corsair fiddled with their newly won jewelry. “As long as I can get a ginger ale or two. I’m dying for something stronger than this awful party champagne.”

“I thought it was okay!” said the Doctor. 

“Oh, darling,” said Missy, and although the Doctor couldn’t see her, she could practically  _ hear  _ her shaking her head. 

“I’m up for it.” Corsair slid off their gloves and left them on the sill. (The Doctor had always liked gloves. It was something about the vulnerability, or rather, lack of; or perhaps it was something about the fabric. Either way, they were a good look on the Corsair, and the Doctor was more than a little upset that they were gone).

The Corsair stood and kissed the Doctor’s cheek, and then her other cheek, annoyingly chaste. “Shall we be off, then?”

The Doctor frowned and pulled them closer for a much longer kiss, wrapping her arms around their waist. When she was satisfactorily finished, she said, “ _ Now _ we can go.”

The Corsair walked out the door, and the Doctor turned to follow, but Missy stopped her before she could leave. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry?”

Missy pulled her into a kiss this time, hooking her teeth on the Doctor’s bottom lip. “You wouldn’t deprive me of my turn, would you?”

“I suppose not,” said the Doctor, flushed entirely pink. “Can we go  _ now _ ?”

“Oh, all right.” Missy drew back and took a minute to examine her makeup in a tiny mirror she kept in her pocket. She adjusted her lipstick with a fresh coat of blood red. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

“You sure?”

“I know you missed old Corsie.”

The Doctor smiled to herself. “I certainly did.” 

Missy slipped her mirror in her pocket. “I’ll see you soon, darling.” 

The Doctor found the Corsair lingering outside, their shirt collar tucked up, playing with some obscured piece of technology. They tucked it away as soon as they spotted the Doctor. “There you are. Kosch is lingering, I assume?”

“Probably stealing things,” said the Doctor. 

“It’s good to see you again,” said the Corsair, honestly. “Thanks for the help back there.”

“You said that already.”

The Corsair laughed. “Because Missy  _ sprinkles _ you with praise?”

“Good point.”

Missy’s footsteps sounded behind them, and she stepped out of the building. “Good evening, my Doctor. Corsair.” She tipped an imaginary hat to the both of them and looped her arm through the Doctor’s. 

The Corsair took the Doctor’s other hand, and they walked together into the night.


End file.
